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S.515 Infringement Damages
Guest Post by Philippe Signore
“If I had more time, I would have written less.” There is some question about who authored this famous quote, but one thing is sure: the folks drafting S515 didn’t do it. Five years in the making, the pending patent legislation is getting longer and more complex with each iteration. Last week, the Senate Judiciary committee released its latest version, which adds a number of new twists. In particular, the damages provision, which takes up 15 lines under current law (35 USC 284), would now be governed by over 100 lines of statute! Given that any single word of a statute can give rise to decades of interpreting jurisprudence (e.g., “process,” “printed publication,” “on sale” “obvious,” “reasonable royalty”), the entire 21st century might be dedicated to interpreting the new statute, unless another reform is enacted before that.
So, what does the new version of S515 provide with respect to damages? Read the rest of this entry »
